Acts 2:42-47 New Life In Christ 4, The Church: "The Church of Expectation" by Rev. Derek S. Langille

• Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be famous? Sure you have! I know I have many times.

• I've toyed with the idea of fame and fortune, influence and reputation.
• I've wondered what it might be like to leave behind anonymity, obscurity, and apparent insignificance for public attention, stardom, and power.
• If fame is the name of the game it's out there for the taking, but is that what it means to belong to the church?
• We don't join the church because we are looking for fame, do we?
• We join because we need to do something meaningful and significant with our lives. We join because we need to cultivate a sense of belonging.
• God has hard-wired those feelings into our mental-emotional make up.  These needs are God given needs.
• We need to do something significant otherwise our lives would be without purpose, meaningless.  We need to belong otherwise we would emotionally stagnate, our hearts would dry up.
• Making a meaningful contribution to the world for the sake of Christ's cross and cultivating a culture of belonging can lead to fame, but they can also lead to something else.
• They can lead the church to expectation.
• Luke tells his readers that the believers became famous for their devotion.
• The Greek verb for devotion that Luke used in verse 42 carries the meaning of being unchanging or unswerving, having a singleness of loyalty to a specific course or set of actions.
• Let me give you an example of the kind of devotion Luke was talking about.  Winston Churchill the late prime minister of Great Britain said at the time of WWII, "We have but one aim and one irrevocable purpose.  We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime.  From this nothing will turn us - nothing.  We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang."
• Now the believers in the new born church had that kind of devotion.  They were determined to keep one set of actions as their primary focus, their main purpose.
•  They were determined to remain devoted "to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."
• Exposition:
• Let's dig deeper into each of these objects of devotion the believers were submitting to...

1. The apostle's teaching - the apostle's teaching refers to the authoritative content conveyed about Jesus of Nazareth by the apostolic eyewitnesses. 

• An apostle is one who is sent as Christ's official representative and messenger.
• They were the ones appointed and sent out to be witnesses to the ministry, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
• Their teaching, without doubt, included the sayings, sermons, stories/parables of Jesus, recounted his earthly works & ministry, his suffering, death and resurrection.
• Examples of this kind of teaching are recorded in the four Gospels of the Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. The rest of the NT is also filled with examples of the apostle's teaching, but with specific purposes to specific churches beyond retelling the words and life of Jesus.
• These apostles were the eyewitnesses to Jesus life, work, teaching, death and resurrection and the church hung on their every word.
• Every time the believers heard the teaching of the apostles, they expected to hear a word from God for their lives.
• Are we as expectant as they?  Do I expect to hear a word from God for me each time I read the Bible or hear the word preached?

2. The fellowship - Those words, "the fellowship," tell Luke's readers that something made the church's gatherings different, distinct, unique.

• They were like a sect within Judaism, but they were not.
• While they kept Jewish customs, they lifted up Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Roman and Jewish authorities executed, as the focus of their worship, preaching and as the centre of God's salvation plan for the world.
• To those first believers, Jesus was the long awaited Jewish Messiah, but he was also the Lord of all the earth.
• To be certain, being devoted to the fellowship was much more than a social get together or ordinary religious gathering.
• Luke stresses this fellowship's uniqueness in verses 44-47a, And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people.
• The devotion to the fellowship which Luke underscores is as much a devotion to one another as it is a devotion to Christ.
• According to Luke, real fellowship highlights the unique nature of the church's primary calling to love one another.
• Every time the believers gathered as the fellowship, they met with expectant love.
• Do we expect to love and be loved as members of the fellowship?  Do I expect to give and receive God's love as a member of the fellowship of believers whenever we gather?
• If real fellowship highlights the church's calling to love one another, then, as Rick Warren said, the best place to expect that love is as a member of a small group.
• Sunday Service is where the crowd meets to worship God, but Small Groups are where intimacy and friendship form bonds of love, God's life giving, life shaping love.

3. The breaking of bread - Bread was the staple food of the Middle East, just as rice is the staple food of Asia.

• Bread is significant because those early believers would not have sat down to eat without thinking of the meal the apostles passed on to them, the meal Jesus shared with the Twelve on the night he was betrayed.
• That night Jesus took the bread, blessed it, and broke it, saying, "This bread is my body, given for you. Take it and eat it in remembrance of me."
• Whether this was an outward or inward observation of the Lord's Supper every time they ate, we cannot be certain.
• What we can be certain of, however, was that even a regular meal in the Jewish context was a spiritual activity, and those early believers shared their meals gladly and generously.
• Sharing with others in need of food was a way of life for them, all the while "praising God and having favour with all the people" as a result of their glad generosity.
• Christ generously gave his body, his life for the church, so the church responded by generously sharing everything they had.
• They broke bread as Christ's cheerful representatives, sharing expectantly waiting on God to work in the lives of people who also need Jesus.
• Are we cheerful sharers who expectantly wait on God to work in people's lives?  Am I Christ's glad representative who shares my belongings and my food expectantly waiting on God to act in people's lives?

4. The prayers - We might be tempted to ask, "What prayers?" because by referring to "the prayers," Luke highlights for his readers formal prayers, both Jewish and Christian.

• By formal prayers, we mean written or memorised prayers that were common to the church.
• The Psalms are a group of formal prayers.  Jesus model prayer, the Lord's Prayer, is a formal prayer.
• That the early church was devoted to the discipline of formal prayer should not surprise us.
• Formal prayers served as guides for the prayer life as well as for prayerful meditation.
• In addition, the members of the new born church, being situated in and around Jerusalem, made use of the Temple prayer times at the third and ninth hours (9:00 am & 3:00 pm) when formal public prayers we observed with particular attention being given to the Book of Psalms.
• In their enthusiasm & with their fresh Holy Spirit given perspective on Scriptural prayers like Psalms, they would have prayed with renewed energy, life & joy.
•  They offered impromptu prayers modeled after past prayers such as the prayer of the believers in Acts 4 which was modeled on part of Psalm 2.
• We can be certain that they devoted themselves to prayer, both public & private, formal & informal.
• The early believers devoted themselves to prayer because they expected God to act.
• Are we devoted to prayer? And if we are, then are we devoted to prayer for the same reason?  Am I devoted to prayer and by my prayers do I expect God to act?
• Well, we have seen that the early church was devoted to the apostles' teaching, and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And we have asked ourselves some hard questions about our devotion.
• Let's turn our attention briefly to another question: What were the results of their expectant, determined devotion?
• 1. They had glad and generous hearts. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.  And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.  And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. - verses 44-47a
• The result of devotion to God's 4 priorities for the church are transformed hearts. The stingy become generous through disciplined devotion.  The angry, bitter and resentful become glad through disciplined devotion.
• 2. God gets the glory while God's people find favour. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people.
• Because their focus was devotion to God, God made them famous in the eyes of the people so he would get even more praise and glory.
• 3.God acts. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. - verse 43 And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. - verse 47b
• God acts when his people devote themselves to him expectantly.  God acted through his apostles displaying signs and wonders to prove the authenticity of their message.  & God acted through working in the lives of others, adding them to the fellowship through their new found faith  in Jesus Christ.
• Now what?  What about us?
• All of this tells me that our church today, each one of us, needs to practice expectantly these same four basic elements of devotion.
• We need to continue to be devoted to the apostle's teaching. We can do that by reading and studying our Bibles, listening to the word preached at Sunday Services or taught in your small group, it may also include reading, watching, or hearing sound teaching in the media. 
• We need to continue to be devoted to the fellowship. 
• Opportunities are always present for us to share Christ's love with each other.  If one has a need, then we ourselves should meet it or find out how we can see it met.
• It is easy for us to see the troubles of the poor & oppressed and it is good for us to give to relieve their suffering. 
• What is harder is to bear with one another in love. God puts us together in the local church and asks us to love the unlovable. 
• He asks us to forgive those blinded to their pride.  He asks us to forgive those who hurt us even as they refuse to admit any wrongdoing.
• He asks us to swallow our pride and give other believers the wonderful blessing of serving us in our need.
• We need to continue to be devoted to the breaking of bread.  Whether it's sharing the Lord's Supper or sharing a meal at the kitchen table we need to practice doing so gladly and generously.
• Just as we exercise loving one another, we must exercise love toward the world generously.
• It can be as simple as praying for God to poor out such a blessing on a suffering neighbour who needs Jesus that they become overwhelmed by God's love or maybe you or I should be the ones to take over a fresh loaf of homemade bread, sit down over tea and hear their pain or, dare I say, their complaints.
• We need to continue to be devoted to the prayers.  I would guess that many of us, not all but many, have prayer lives that are pretty flighty.  That is where the discipline of formal prayer comes in handy.
• We need to make use of the prayers God has made available to us in his word.  We need to not only read them; we need to pray them. We need to not only pray them; we need to meditate on them & we need to do it all expectantly. 
• When we pray we need to pray with renewed energy, life and joy because we know and expect God to act.
• And when we do all these expectantly, anticipating God's transforming work in our lives, he will act.
• Act expectantly as you wait for God to show his power and grow his church!